Arches Park ranger warns Gabby Petito his relationship looks ‘toxic’

Melissa Hulls can still hear Gabby Petito’s voice.

On August 12, the Arches National Park Visitor Protection and Resource Supervisor heard a call on his radio about a possible domestic assault, resulting from an argument in Moab between Petito and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie.

Hulls arrived to find the couple stopped by a Moab policeman inside the park. Knowing that in a domestic violence situation the woman generally feels more comfortable talking with another woman, she focused on Petito, who at the time was sitting in the back of a car. from police.

“I can still hear his voice,” Hulls said in an exclusive interview with Deseret News. “She wasn’t just a face on the milk carton, she was real to me.”

Hulls imagines the 22-year-old sobbing sitting in the back of the cruiser. She knows his manners, just from the interaction of about an hour and a half.

“I was probably more candid with her than I should have been,” Hulls recalls, warning Petito that his relationship with Laundrie had the hallmarks of a “toxic” relationship.

“I implored with her to reassess the relationship, asking her if she was happy in the relationship with him, and basically saying that it was an opportunity for her to find another way, to change her life,” he said. she declared.

“She was very anxious to be away from him, I honestly thought if anything had to change it would be after they got back to Florida.”

In the end, Petito stayed with Laundrie.

“It wasn’t a good day for anyone. We thought we were making the right decision when we left them.

And on Sunday, when she heard the news that the FBI had recovered a body in Wyoming “as Gabby Petito’s description”, the 17-year-old ranger tilted his head back and heaved a sigh. one too familiar with a body recovery effort.

“Honestly, I didn’t look at my body camera footage that night. It’s hard to think about it now because I feel like I could have said more to help her, ”she said. “It’s hard not to question myself, and I wish I had said more, or I wish I had found the right words to make her believe she deserved more.”

“Where’s Gabby?” “

It’s a video that millions of Americans have watched. Gabby Petito, sitting in the passenger seat of her van, cries uncontrollably as she and Laundrie are approached by a Moab policeman.

Petito apologized several times. Laundrie, soft-spoken, nervous and also sorry, sits in the driver’s seat as he removes the keys from the ignition and explains why the van hit the curb.

“He really stresses me out. It’s a tough morning, ”Petito told officers.

“I don’t know, it’s just been a few days since I had a really bad OCD and I was cleaning and straightening up and apologizing to him,” she says as the officer pulls her away from the van, making her sit on the sidewalk before helping her into the air-conditioned cruiser.

“I’m sorry for being so mean.”

Petito then details a fight between her and Laundrie earlier in the afternoon, where she says her fiance tried to lock her out of the car, telling him that she “needed to calm down”.

Their stories line up, with Laundrie telling officers, “I said, ‘Let’s just take a break and get nowhere. Let’s calm down just a minute. He then told police that the many scratches on his face were from Petito hitting him as she tried to get back into the van.

A striking image soon emerges – a sobbing Petito, surrounded by male officers. Then Hulls arrives.

After comforting Petito, Hulls discusses what to do with his co-workers.

They had several options. With the facts suggesting that Petito was the abuser, they could have taken him to jail. But Hulls said the situation appeared to be more of a mental health crisis than a case of domestic violence.

What Petito did in Laundrie “was touching,” Hulls said. “She shouldn’t have done it, but it was not done maliciously.”

“I wouldn’t have called (the relationship) dangerous. If we had had any reason to believe that any of them were in danger, we would have separated them, ”she said.

On Monday, audio of the 911 call was played, giving new insight into what led to Hulls’ interaction with Petito.

“A gentleman was slapping the girl,” the appellant told dispatchers. “They were walking up and down the sidewalk. He started hitting her, jumped in the car and they drove away. ”

Hulls detailed the complex, difficult – and often scrutinized – relationship between law enforcement and domestic violence situations. Sometimes the choice is clear and knowing that the victim is in imminent danger can make the job of the responder easier. But it’s not always black and white.

“Sometimes you get evidence and they don’t recognize it, and they just lie to your face and it’s dangerous, and you know something more is going to happen if you let them in together.” It’s a much easier decision to quit, ”she said. “With this one, I don’t think she understood how much of a problem this was.”

So they separated the couple. Petito picked up the van, Laundrie was taken to a hotel, and a few days later they were back on the road, heading north to Salt Lake City.

Their social media presence resumed, showing all indications of a happy couple in love and living the coveted van life. They stopped in Ogden, where Petito is pictured in front of a mural of butterflies, the latest thing posted on his Instagram account.

A few days later, Petito texted his mother before the couple went camping in Wyoming. It was the last time they had heard from their daughter. A week later, she is missing.

On Sunday, the story took a heartbreaking turn when investigators made the grim announcement of Grand Teton National Park.

The case is still under investigation – what exactly happened to Petito and what role Laundrie played has yet to be announced. But according to the thousands, maybe millions, depending on the story, Laundrie is guilty.

“Where’s Gabby?” Became a rallying cry, repeated ad nauseam in the thousands of comments under Laundrie’s still active Instagram account.

Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

When news of the incident outside of Arches broke, Moab quickly became a focal point. Screenshots of body camera images, with Utah’s iconic red rocks in the background, have become the primary image used by national media.

Even now, weeks after the incident, the case is still casually mentioned throughout Moab – spend a few hours in a cafe, bar, even the Arches National Park Visitor Center, and you’re bound to hear the name of Petito.

Sometimes they express their grief. Sometimes they speculate on what happened. And sometimes they criticize the response of the Moab police.

Why was Petito treated like the abuser? Why was Laundrie, who towered over her fiancée, treated as a victim? And why haven’t they noticed, as some on Twitter have suggested, the signs of a controlling and manipulative relationship?

The hindsight is 2020, Hulls said of the review, noting that “it’s easy to say that when you can break down a video, minute by minute, and judge it, rather than being in the moment. where we saw minor injuries and two people apologizing.

“It’s not that we didn’t think he was manipulative, but we have to be concerned about security, not the psychology of it,” she said. “We have to trust the facts we were faced with at the time and not let our emotions guide the decision.”

And while Hulls doesn’t blame the actions taken by her colleagues that day, she admits it can be difficult not to focus on what else she might have said to Petito.

“It’s hard not to think that I could have done something more or found the exact words to make her life change at this point,” she said. “There are so many circumstances where you would like it to go a certain way, and if you get stuck with ‘should, could have, should have’, you can’t do that job. You have to learn from it and keep going, or you won’t help the next Gabby.

Spenser Heaps, Deseret News